What is a Literacy Leader?
Depending on what school division or province you are in, this role will have a number of different responsibilities. Some examples may include providing high quality literature for students to be utilizing, collaborating with teachers regarding instructional strategies on reading and comprehension. It may involve instruction and implementation of other types of literacies such as information and/or media and technology. You may be directly responsible for school wide initiatives regarding literacy. Therefore, it will be imperative to speak with your direct supervisors and to obtain documents that outline your role as a literacy leader.


What is a Readers' Advisory?

According to Wikipedia, a Reader's Advisory is a service that gives individuals titles for additional reading either directly or indirectly. This service is usually found in libraries, but has expanded into some bookstores as well. These types of services can come in two formats; direct and indirect. Direct methods involve an interview or type of questionnaire process where a reader is asked about their reading. It may be as simple as asking about the last book they enjoyed and/or it may involve further probing about the book and/or their reading habits. Once information has been obtained the advisor will make suggestions to a variety of new titles based on this new information or interview. Indirect methods involve book displays, staff picks and reading suggestions that can be easily picked up and where individuals do not need to have direct contact with anyone but still come away with new ideas for reading material.

It will be important to understand the needs of your students, staff and community. This will mean being familiar with school division and provincial curriculum expectations.


Below are a couple of example of different types of interviews to give you an idea of how an informal interview can be done.